Israel reportedly has been under cyber attack by Anonymous, although the lethality of the attacks is questioned:

Anonymous, the loose coalition of hackers waging war on Israeli Web sites, is the least of Israel’s cyber problems. Its campaign against Israel is a minor annoyance compared with a wave of cyber attacks that have hit the country over the last year from Iran and Gaza.

Since Wednesday — when Israel began airstrikes into Gaza — Anonymous hackers have retaliated with millions of hacking efforts on Israeli government and private business sites, intermittently taking hundreds offline, defacing some with anti-Israel messages, deleting Web databases for others and dumping thousands of citizens’ usernames and passwords online.

The campaign, which hackers have dubbed #OpIsrael, is essentially the digital equivalent of a business getting hit with graffiti; it is a costly nuisance, but eventually databases can be recovered, messages removed and sites come back online. Israeli officials say the vast majority of the hacking efforts over the last week on government sites — some 44 million tries by one official’s count — have been unsuccessful, with the exception of one site that went “wobbly for a few minutes,” the Israeli finance minister, Yuval Steinitz, told reporters, before recovering.

Which brings me to the question of why Israel, and for that matter the U.S., has not been able to take down Anonymous.

The United States used U.S.-Israeli spy software to hack into the French presidential office earlier this year, the French cyberwarfare agency has concluded, according to the newsmagazine l’Express.

The magazine reported late Tuesday that the computers of several close advisers to then-president Nicolas Sarkozy – including Chief of Staff Xavier Musca – were compromised in May by a computer virus that bears the hallmarks of Flame, which was allegedly created by a U.S.-Israeli team to target Iran’s nuclear program. Anonymous French officials pointed the finger at the United States.

I realize that attacking an identifiable target is easier than attacking an amorphous group … but still, one wonders.

Excuse the blunt language, but if these Anonymous hackers think they can side with Hamas against Israel without consequence, they’ve got another think coming. Dude, if the FBI gets you, that’s one thing. If the Mossad ever gets you? Hey, accidents happen:

The Israel Air force struck Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh’s headquarters in the northern Gaza Strip early Saturday morning, according to the IDF Spokesman’s Office.

Getting involved in a shooting war seems to raise the stakes quite a bit for hackers.

My kids keep telling me that “Anonymous” is an internet meme, not a group. What that means is that claiming to do something as Anonymous is the equivalent of writing “Kilroy was here.” Anybody can claim to be “Anonymous” and use whatever logos and artwork happen to be current.

That said, there is NO SUCH THING as anonymity on the Internet. My kids think differently, because they think that moderately complicated techniques such as spoofing are genuine identity protection.

There are a few competent bad guys who have posted as “Anonymous.” They’re known.

Meanwhile, murder, rape, and slavery remain part of the Islamic tradition throughout Africa. Meanwhile, communism, socialism, and other left-wing regimes denigrate individual dignity through coerced redistribution schemes and selective liberty. Meanwhile, over one million human lives are aborted annually for reasons of personal welfare or livelihood in America alone.

Perhaps they do not know the history of that land. Perhaps they do not know the disparate conditions which exist within the “Palestinian” territories. Perhaps they do not know that the Palestinians, along with their one-time allies in Jordan, Syria, Egypt, etc., initiated a war of aggression against Jews, Christians, and others in the Middle East.

I question the motives and awareness of the individuals and groups involved with the anti-Israel campaign. It reminds me of the people and groups who supported a war against Serbia to give a final victory to Muslims. Not coincidentally in Kosovo where previous Islamic imperial ambitions were delayed.

Which brings me to the question of why Israel, and for that matter the U.S., has not been able to take down Anonymous.

How come the Black Panthers never got prosecuted for voter intimidation? Easy. Anonymous is Occupy, is Obama for America, is CPUSA. They have an unlimited budget to run cyber ops, and the administration will look the other way.

“Which brings me to the question of why Israel, and for that matter the U.S., has not been able to take down Anonymous.”

And you believe this to be the case because neither Israel or American Intel has said so?

Why would they announce to the world that they have. (well, thanks to the ego maniac in office, the US is a bit leaky but Israel? Not so much.)

I firmly believe that stuxnet was revealed for one or both of the following reasons:
1) It had been discovered (or known about enough to negate it’s usefulness.)
2) 1 and it was obsolete and/or had penetrated far enough so that it now is omnipresent in the iranian computers.

They haven’t revealed any push back as many of the “hackers” (hate giving them that label) are also sources of intel on anti israeli groups and future plans and or attacks both cyber and real time.

It’s not that difficult to plant a virus or tracking software on a computer used for hacking. (yes they watch for that but many of these folks are real amateurs. yet they’re hooked in enough to be useful sources of intel.)

then when they’ve milked them for their usefulness, they’re quietly arrested for some other charge so that no one knows that they got counter hacked.

Perhaps I have too much faith in a shadow organization but so far Israeli intelligence has shown a remarkable ability to predict and counter most of the efforts of multiple nations to bring them down.

90% of “Anonymous” are twenty-somethings who live in their mom’s basement and hang out on /b/ on 4Chan.org. Most of their “hacking” is breaking into the EXIF data of dirty cell phone pics posted on that website.